Emma Hack. The art of camouflage.

You may wonder: what am I looking at? Well, Emma Hack is an australian artist that enjoys world fame by now. I already heard and read about her several times and I loved what I saw.

Here you see the artist herself on a video that is shown at the exhibit on Hollywood Road.

I was very excited so see that she was having an exhibition here in Hong Kong. Too bad that I read about it one day too late, because the day before, at the opening, she was at the gallery, live body painting a model for 7 hours! to be transformed into a part of a wallpaper.

As you can read in the above newspaper article, she is also the artist who did the bodypaint work on Gotye’s famous music clip. Which I love by the way, both the clip and the music!

Too bad that I missed that opening and live painting, but at least I was able to see the exhibition.

It is at Cat Street Galleries.

I had a lot of trouble finding the place, but in the end I did, ofcourse. When I arrived there, there was a sign on the door saying the gallery was closed for a short while. Another lady, who came all the way from Macau for this exhibit, was not amused. But there was a phone number and when I dialed that, the girl from the gallery came rushing over. End good, all good;-).

The gallery AND the exhibit are small, but I enjoyed it. Have a look at Emma Hack’s works:

Basically what she does is this: she chooses or creates a wallpaper or background and bodypaints a model so that the model disappears in the wallpaper, so to speak. Sometimes she adds on a real bird, like an owl, that rests on the hand of the model.

In my pictures the model sometimes is a bit more visible then on the works in reality. This is due to the angle from which I took the picture, or due to the way the picture came out (contrast wise and all).
So believe me that looking at the work, you often have to look twice or even thrice to discover the model. That’s how good it is done!

It is esthetically beautiful and has a tranquil, serene feeling.

If you decide to visit this exhibition, don’t forget to look at the gorgeous, hefty Wallpaper book that lies on the desk. It belongs to Emma Hack’s work and it is a really beautiful book.

It is a bit too pricey for me and on top of that I am not going to carry heavy and huge items like that around the globe. But if those objections do not refer to you, I would seriously advice you to buy this book. It is beautiful and will be an absolute eye-catcher on your coffee table!

Oh, and do hurry, since the exhibit ends in a couple of days, on september 22nd!

If you are interested in buying her work, here are some of the prices:

What do you think of this art? It reminds me of the camouflage art by Liu Bolin from China. Are you familiar with his work? Which art do you prefer?